Pneumonia

This will be the most embarrassing story I’ve written to date, by far. It’s been a couple of weeks now and although it wasn’t completely hilarious at the time, I find it pretty funny now. Plus, I believe it will be an ego boost for most of you. I’m here to help people, I’m here to help.

A little over two weeks ago I started getting sick. This is how it went:

Day 1: Took a 20 minute snooze prior to work at 6:30 PM. Woke up and didn’t quite feel right. Tightness in the chest and a bit short of breath. After about four hours at work I started to cough. Urgh. Probably bronchitis.

Day 2: Woke up and didn’t cancel my plans to go to Minneapolis to watch my God-daughter play volleyball. I was convinced I could work through whatever this was, loaded up on DayQuil and whatever else I could find in the cupboard and hit the road. As the day wore on I went downhill. Insisted on going out for dinner and hopefully catching some live music somewhere. The downhill slide continued during dinner and we ended up going home and vegging on the couch. I then kept everyone up all night with my coughing. A great house guest for sure. Yup bronchitis.

Day 3: As the alarm was shrieking at 5 something AM it became clear to me I was not going to be able to attend any sort of sporting event that took place in public. I was a mess and needed to get home….some how…..some way. The how was driving, the way was hopping myself up on Mucinex, DayQuil, Alka Seltzer Plus and Cloroseptic spray. I remember about 50% of the drive. Not good but I made it. May be typhoid fever.

Day 3 Facebook post: “At the urging of Pam I went and picked up Delsym. It took everything I had to head to Walgreen’s. On the way home I’m positive I saw an alien in the car next to me, it looked right at me and it was glowing. Scared the crap out of me. I wonder if I’m running a fever……Delsym seems to be good though, feeling better already.”

As I know now, the feeling better was short-lived. I’m still unsure about the alien, I’m positive that’s what I saw. During the night things went downhill with each passing hour. Unable to lay down I made my bed in the living room chair and hoped for some good TV, that didn’t happen either so I turned off the TV, turned on the fan and took more Mucinex. I personally think the one tablet every 12 hours is more of a guideline than a rule and does not apply to me.

Day 4: The night was miserable and this is where the embarrassing parts of the story really start. I have not had kids but I am aging at the speed of light and I would imagine that is why I’ve lost the ability to cough and not wet my pants at times. This happened a couple of times in the wee hours of the morning but I ignored it, hoping it was a rarity. I was wrong, I was so very wrong. Against all I wanted to do, I broke down and went to the doctor. It took me about an hour to shower and get ready because every 10 minutes I had to take a break and have a coughing fit. At this point I was also pretty sure I had cracked a couple of ribs and pulled some muscles.

The doctor diagnosed me with pneumonia and influenza. He told me he’d do the influenza test but it’s wrong about 50% of the time. He said the meds wouldn’t hurt me if I didn’t have it but he was 99% certain I did. He prescribed a hearty antibiotic, Tamiflu and an inhaler. Told me to come back in four days if I didn’t feel better.

I went to Target to fill my prescriptions. The Pharmacist said “It will be about 15 minutes, you can go shop”. As he was saying it he looked up at me and added “Nevermind, you can wait right there” and pointed to the bench. Apparently I didn’t look so good. I sat down to wait for my scripts and people watched. As I was people watching I realized people were actually watching me. I was the one, the one everyone was staring at and talking about, at one point I think someone may have called the coroner for me. A few minutes into my wait a delivery guy showed up. when he bent over to pick up boxes he passed gas….very loudly. When he turned around to look at me I said “Really? Are you serious?” He shrugged his shoulders and went about his business. Of course that would happen.

I took my drugs in the car and collapsed with exhaustion in the chair when I got home. For the next several hours I coughed, drank fluids, then peed my pants, then coughed some more and peed my pants some more. I should probably state here that it wasn’t an all out peeing of the pants, it couldn’t be because I was going in the bathroom every 10 minutes I was drinking so many fluids. The most frustrating part is it would happen as I was getting back into my chair from the bathroom. I had just went to the bathroom, where was it all coming from!!! I was now positive it was the Plague.

I had burned…well peed through every pair of yoga pants and pretty much every pair of underwear I own. I was on my last pair and it happened again. As I was sitting in the bathroom crying while using the hair dryer to dry my last pair of underwear I broke out in hysterical laughter. How ridiculous is my life that here I sit, on the toilet, using a hair dryer to salvage my last pair of clean underwear, bawling my eyes out and trying not to throw up at the same time?

Of course I had to share my scenario so I sent a text to my understanding, non-judgmental, she’ll laugh at me but still love me friend that went something like this, “Well, 8 pair of underwear and 3 pair of yoga pants and I’m out of both because I’ve peed my pants so many times from coughing so hard. I have now resorted to blow drying the crotch of my last pair of underwear as I’m sitting on the toilet. I am too sick to do laundry.” If I remember correctly her response was “I’m dying over here”. There may have been a series of texts prior to that but there’s large amounts of time I do not remember during this two weeks of sickness. May have been due to the fact that I blatantly ignored dosage instructions.

Day 5: I had to force myself to do laundry for obvious reasons and also force myself to work. After getting directions from the doctor that I of course ignored I worked….all week. It’s bad when you have to pack extra underwear for work in case you have a coughing fit or five. Like I said, I was hoping to just plow through this sickness, if I ignore it, it will go away, right? Wrong.

Day 6 & Day 7: More coughing, more throwing up, less energy, more drugs, more exhaustion, zero food, more liquids and more text messages explaining the terrible things my body was doing. More laughter from my supportive friend and a phone call from her to another friend yelling because I was getting no help at home. Well, I was offered help from some but I did not take it because I was really irritated with those that should have helped.

Day 8: Another trip to the doctor for a lecture about working too much and not taking care of myself as I should. So shocking that I didn’t listen. There was another round of drugs, this time prednisone for my breathing and some cough syrup with codeine, glorious, glorious codeine. Once again, I skipped the part on dosage. Helping my cough helped my pants peeing problem.

Skip to day 18, which is today: I took my meds the last two weeks, borrowed some more meds, didn’t take time off work and am finally feeling better. I haven’t wet my pants in at least 10 days, life is pretty good. The only thing I listened to the doctor about was the no outside shoveling, etc. Which of course has been a disaster, I think the mailman quit delivering the mail because I haven’t shoveled the front walk. I probably should ask for help from those that actually offered previously but I’m not very good at that. And now it’s so frozen it won’t actually clean up until spring. Oh well, such is life for a very stubborn pants wetter.

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2 thoughts on “Pneumonia”

Glad to hear you are feeling better. Next time ask for help. Real friends want to help they just don’t always know how or what is needed. I have that going with the neighbors right now. Take care. Keep writing, Always brightens my morning.

I know what you mean. I am going through this right now, but no flu. Probably ebola. I picked it up in NY somewhere when everyone, including the grandparents, were sick. But no fever. Jesus H I am wearing a pad to help. It isn’t every time but the coughs that make my abs and ribs ache are getting to me and I am sure I am going to drop dead at that moment. I have had to sleep on three pillows to keep from drowning in my phlegm. I refuse to go to my doctor, I am going to beat this with time and Wal-Mart brand “NyQuil/DayQuil” that apparently has no freaking decongestant for the night stuff. I should have spent the extra $5! I bought an extra pack of underwear for crying outloud. My dearheart has to sleep on the sofa last night to get sleep; at least the cats didn’t mind as they slept with me and didn’t care if I coughed. I am at day 7, but the coughing part only began a few days ago. Ugh.